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flatt writes "Ending a sixteen year partnership between the now Comcast-owned NBCUniversal and Microsoft, the MSNBC.com website has been immediately renamed to NBCNews.com. Both parties note that the integration between both parties is deep and will require 2 years to complete the decoupling. For the immediate future, NBC will continue to provide news content for MSN.com and Microsoft will continue to be the advertising provider for the site. Content control, brand confusion, and partisan content are cited as reasons behind the breakup. Microsoft sold its 50% share in the MSNBC TV rights to NBC back in 2005."

Or maybe MS wants to focus on other things. Also the venture for MS may not have been profitable. The summary is partially correct: in 2005, MS sold 32% of its 50% stake of the venture and gave up control as well. MSNBC from them was probably partisan from NBC's control not MS.

It simply means the way forward for M$ is to let MSN forge ahead. M$'s biggest failure was to choke off the development of the MSN network behind incompetant management decisions coming out of Uncle Fester and the Ballmerites. Those backward loons choked off the creativity of MSN, tried to squeeze monopoly like profit margins out of it only to send it into loss and turned away the market they had. M$ basically gave away Google to Google, MSN had it all, only to see Ballmer choke the chicken.

This is actually pretty surprising because the main NBC envisions itself as more neutral and objective than MSNBC. There have been incidents where at Tea Party rallies, the protesters would be chanting "NBC" (not "MSNBC") when some sort of bias was brought up -- in fact this was part of the speculation as to why Keith Olbermann was suspended. (a few months before he quit)

On the flipside, it doesn't seem to benefit M$ to piss off conservatives either. I never really see them taking many partisan stances. (I

If Microsoft doesn't like the political spin that NBC puts on news, it just goes to show you that corporate news is not about providing information, but providing corporate propaganda. Corporations don't want proper news organizations, but organs that promote their point of view.

Or it could be that they thought that a "proper" news organization like MSNBC shouldn't be so buddy buddy with the left, that they even report on their own website [msn.com] how skewed they are:

Msnbc.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two g

CNBC covers financial news from the perspective of a the small stock / mutual fund investor. You'll rarely hear news on CNBC from the perspective of professionals or control investors.MSNBC offers opinion journalism from the perspective of the left.NBC tries as best as possible to offer traditional journalism, i.e. news from the perspective of the Washington rulership.

Andrea Mitchell Report is an MSNBC show. But yes, the Zimmerman tape. Attempting to be objective is not the same as achieving perfection in every regard on every issue. Here is a list from Media Matters for America which includes the NBC tag:

CNBC covers financial news from the perspective of a the small stock / mutual fund investor. You'll rarely hear news on CNBC from the perspective of professionals or control investors.MSNBC offers opinion journalism from the perspective of the left.NBC tries as best as possible to offer traditional journalism, i.e. news from the perspective of the Washington rulership.

No, MSNBC isn't objective, but they're honest about their slant now. Good, I prefer it that way. Be up front about it. For all of the craven shilling MSNBC does for the left at times, they still have more integrity than NBC because they're honest about it. NBC doesn't "aim to be objective". NBC aims to cloak their biases under the blanket of objectivity, and increasingly, people aren't fooled.

The Brits had this figured out years ago in their press system. The Guardian doesn't pretend to be unbiased. Neither

Not from, to. A Wall Street Investment Bank is far more interested in things that CNBC doesn't cover:

a) Whose in and whose out in various regulatory agenciesb) What the compensation plans are at various banksc) Whose getting what percentage on which IPOsd) Which companies pay high fees on their issuancese) What pension funds are shopping around for new management.f) How different derivative pricing models are holding up.g) New hedge vehicles.

Several things. First, that report was over the media landscape entirely. They identified CNN, ABC, Fox and yes, their own as giving political donations. This is precisely the reason what got Keith Olbermann in trouble in 2010/2011. He made donations to Congressman Grijalva of Arizona to the tune of 2,400 bucks. Thus his suspension, then firing from the network. He was also MSNBC's biggest draw.

The other point is that when talking about MSNBC's biases, you've got to look at life before and after Keith

Or it could be that they thought that a "proper" news organization like MSNBC shouldn't be so buddy buddy with the left, that they even report on their own website [msn.com] how skewed they are:

There's a word for "they even report on their own website". It's called "disclosure" and it's something MSNBC is doing that Fox doesn't do, CNN doesn't do, and ABC doesn't do.

Never mind that their prime time news personality (Chris Matthews) used to be Chief of Staff for the Democratic Speaker of the House during the Reagan years - yep, that engenders political objectivity...

You're a big supporter of every company where you used to work? You think Burger Village is the best food in town just because you flipped burgers there and got to be assistant manager when the previous assistant manager left to have her father's baby?

Go take a look at the pundits and talking heads on every network. They all used to do something. They all voted one way or the other (most likely) and they all have a sexual orientation, a religion (or not) and probably prefer either Apple or Android.

It's really not hard to discern who's ringing the bullshit bell (and for whom it tolls) if you have half a brain and the willingness to check your own bias once in a while. Also, check a fact now and then. Do it yourself. If you are checking a media outlet's facts against what another media outlet's "fact checker" says, your running in a circle, so don't rely on "fact checker sites" to be your ref because now every two-bit Right Wing (or Left Wing depending upon your own in-house bias) outfit has it's own "fact check" site that is supposedly telling you how full of shit the other side is. Yes, it gets confusing, but if you act in good faith, and (I'm not kidding about this) have a heart that is pure you'll be able to figure it all out easily enough.

So, you equate **not** liking political spin, in other words, **bias**, with propaganda? I find that logic less than satisfactory. Political spin is, by definition, biased, and a therefore a close cousin of propaganda.

You're being overly paranoid. Newspaper and websites want eyeballs so they can sell advertising and make money. Now, individual authors and writers might have their own point of view, but so does everyone.

You do realize that eyeball-herding celebrity gossip and 'infotainment' fluff are probably overwhelmingly more efficient in neutralizing the effects of a free press than simply having your Political Kommisars order them to publish assorted farcical lies?

Propaganda in the classic sense certainly isn't a total failure; but a voluntarily afactual media is ultimately even more useless than one that is merely contrafactual.

This is a revelation to you? The vast majority of American media is skewed to one political bias or another and few are willing to publish the hard facts. That's all the gp was saying and you got modded up for pointing out how sad of a fact it was? Slashdot really amazes me. But then again, around here we have a fair number of dopes who honestly believe that the reason people still run Windows and OSX is because they've never seen Linux. SMH.

I would swing it more to the side of, "people are more interested in Tom and Katie than in advances in plant metabolism." That despite the exciting new discoveries we are making in plant metabolism. People aren't interested in that, so news only covers it briefly.

Most people aren't interested in politics either.....so you only get superficial coverage.

Be careful, don't think that the BBC lacks bias, they all have some. BBC has different biases though, that aren't easily recognizable for an American. For an easily obvious example of BBC bias, go back and look at some of the reporting during the Falklands war.

You're being overly paranoid. Newspaper and websites want eyeballs so they can sell advertising and make money. Now, individual authors and writers might have their own point of view, but so does everyone.

Almost. It's more like they want eyeballs so they can sell them to advertisers. Companies provide copy AND news stories, and news organizations sell their consumers to the highest bidder. YOU are the product.

Everytime I installed windows 95/98 and having to get rid of that stupid icon from the desktop and then from the ie bookmarks which were included even up to win 7. FInally that stupid icon is going to die away.

Don't think anyone is really going Metro. Most of the people giving it a thumbs down are planning on sticking with 7 until MS realizes what a cluster-fuck 8 is, and decides to go back to the WIMP paradigm in 9.

Of course, if 8 somehow obtains a magical killer-app that the rest of the tech world can't live without, then they will switch to 8. Or they could pull a Wesley, and make 9 even more tablety to try and convince everyone that 8 was really the way to go, but who knows?

Most of the people who have tried Metro on the right sorts of equipment love it. Where it sucks is on traditional mouse/keyboard input systems. Microsoft appears to have the vision for changing the x86 platform and moving it towards that sort of hardware. There is a going to be a huge backlash, they claim to be willing to stand their ground. We'll have to wait and see.

I agree. I think the Windows 8 strategy in driving up hardware prices might finally create a reasonable sized niche at the low end for the Linux desktops. Linux has always made sense for the low end of the market. XP was so compelling though, and Microsoft so intent on capturing the low end even at the expense of their own profits that they've crushed the market. Now they have too many other threats and the low end of the market would hold them back.

I know the NBC is comfortable with the bias. As they see it, MSNBC is a cable station that has established a strong niche regular viewership. A dedicated viewership in the millions is gold for a cable station it means reliable ratings i.e. advertising dollars day after day, week after week, year after year. And MSNBC's ratings are likely to double under a Republican administration. Moreover "news junkies" are a good demographic. Further this split allows NBC news to do important journalism with less po

It is kinda funny, when MSNBC started it was considered a Right Leaning, new organization, then Fox News came out, making it seem much to moderate. So to survive, it went to more left leaning then the other stations. So in terms of Cable News you have these options...Fox News, News for Right Wing Nuts, Fare and balanced if you are right wing nut.CNN, News for those people who really don't care, in an attempt to be moderate it doesn't really go into any depth.MSNBC, New For Liberals, Hard hitting on the liberal agenda.

I am a political moderate myself and I don't care for any of these sites, I seem to switch to NPR, While it is left of center, and I am right of center, I found that NPR puts a little more depth in its coverage compared to the others, and doesn't really jump on the insanity.

No, it means Microsoft was dead weight for NBC. It didn't contribure anything useful to the partnership. Microsoft is not really respected for its online offerings. Its always been a step or two behind other companies.

Wait, I'm confused. This story suggests that this sale of the Microsoft share of MSNBC is a recent thing, but the summary says the sale happened in 2005. Is this old news, or did Microsoft have additional ownership that has recently (like within this calendar year) been purchased as well to finalize the split?

It's a bit confusing. There were two MSNBCs: MSNBC the cable channel, and MSNBC the website.

Microsoft divested itself of MSNBC the cable channel in 2005, which is what TFS refers to. MSNBC the cable channel has been owned and operated solely by NBC since then.

MSNBC the website is what today's news is about. Microsoft has sold off their 50% share of MSNBC the website to Comcast/NBC. As a result NBC now has full control over MSNBC the website - content, technology, and (most importantly) advertising.

NBC now owns both MSNBCs. Ultimately in 2013 there will be a single TV/web MSNBC entity just like CNN and FoxNews today. Meanwhile the current MSNBC the website will become NBC's news website.

The last Olympics was 'delayed' and only viewable on your TV set during evening prime-time viewing, and NOT on-the-net (with any legality). Now, all is going to be available online, so everyone can chat with their facebook friends.

Looked at from another angle, it's being locked down. Facebook isn't "everyone".

I thought it was "everyone with Facebook AND a cable TV subscription" since you need to log in with your cable TV account on nbcolympics.com before you can watch anything (outside of their prime-time event picks)

Every Cabloid news channel is lying and manipulating and propagandizing the news.
There is no real journalism going on, just laundering of corporate agendas and government talking points. CNN and Fox Noise have had their viewership go down by half and 20% respectively, over the last year. I believe the rapid decline is due to the fact that people know they're being lied to and have done to get the real news somewhere else, or have just stopped caring and tuned out.
The world is depressing enough already w

Is there such a thing as actual TV news in the US anymore instead of the so-called "news" put out by entities like Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC etc?I think "The News Hour" (on PBS in the US and SBS in Australia) is watchable but how does it go on bias and agendas?

What are the equivalencies to Beck, Fox and Friends, Hannity, Maddow, or Olbermann on PBS? PBS is appealing to left leaning upper middle class because the content doesn't cater to political wingnuts like Fox and MSNBC. You're confusing content with bias. When a Fox producer gets caught on the job riling up a crowd at a Tea Party event, Beck promotes "Fox Tea Parties", or FoxNews.com reports the ACA being upheld as affirmation of ObamaTax, that's bias.

Both have partisan viewpoints, but that is all the commonality. When it comes to admitting errors, saying "There I go, but for the grace of God" when CNN flubbed the ACA decision, issuing corrections, Maddow is way way better than Hannity.

They have already pretty much lost their funding. 40 years ago America had a strong public television and public radio infrastructure producing programs at a loss that worked to educate the public and enhance the public interest. Those are the sorts of things we can't afford to do today because we need corporate profits to be at an all time high.

Actually, these days, PBS seems to carry more and more dubious infomercial type "medical" programs, very bland music, and ancient British TV programs.(OK, I exaggerate a little, not all the British TV programs are old.)

it's biased towards "highbrow" which is to appeal to left leaning upper middle class people.

right, because PBS and NPR are trying to promote enriching and beneficial news and entertainment in separate realms. as for the left leaning upper middle class people, i guess they just havent succumbed to the sophistication of nascar and larry the cable guy.

It focuses much more on culture that the masses don't care about (such as opera).

So the acclaimed science program Nova, Inspector Lewis, Downtown Abbey, and Childrens programming like Barney? im sure there are others [pbs.org]

Oddly, it's pro investing but mildly anti-business

so a television station that isnt willing to just carte blanche pander for advertising cash and instead gets a chance to truly criticize things like hydraulic fracturing and the pharmaceutical industry has somehow become a bad thing.

I doubt your brother has ever watched PBS (the "listeny" one is called NPR, both under the CPB but separate entities.) flamebait bullshit like "theres a small bit of truth" is the same crap FOX does in order to gin up dissent against anything that goes against the GOP or its inherent interests. it would be better to say "my brother once watched Tavis Smiley form a coherent and well structured argument against the established patterns and processes of social inequality as it applies to race, and that didnt fit with my american dream narrative so now the entire station is some sort of marxist cabal."

I don't think you understand the difference between "bias" in news/reporting and "targeting" in entertainment. ESPN is not "biased" toward a lowbrow audience because focus on ball-sports. That's their entertainment niche. If they reported unfairly toward one team or the next, then that would be bias.

And what does "pro-environmental" mean? That they would like the natural environment to continue to exist?

They're also not anti-business. Never does PBS say anything like, "We should not organize into consolidated sales or service providers to create a streamlined delivery and accounting process." They're against corrupt business. They're bearish investors. They prefer honest and safe investment. But when corrupt business is the means to a new bubble and the myth of perpetual growth, anyone who speaks against such irrational buying will be said to be "anti-business".

They're also not "pro-welfare state", they're pro-healthy-people. Check out the Frontline (I think it was Frontline) episode "Sick Around the World". The reporter goes to different countries finding out how other nations keep their people healthy (Britain, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, etc.). They show faults with all their systems and constantly show contrast with our system which is globally acknowledges to have some of the lowest value of care for the highest cost.

What you may need to acknowledge is that, in balanced investigation and reporting, if some things seem to consistently come out to be favorable, that might not be bias... but reality.

Sweet! I've read in Slashdot comments time and time again that people are modded down as a method of disagreement, but hadn't experienced it until today. I don't know if I should be happy that I now understand it with my above post being marked as a "troll" or if I should be dismayed that the complaints have grounds.

When this transaction first happened in the 90s, it didn't make sense to me. Why was MS starting a news channel and a news website, when NBC was already there, and MS really had nothing to bring to the party. I know, that was the era of Friends and Seinfeld, which made NBC far more attractive than Fox, ABC and CBS. However, MS made itself look like a shill for the Left in the eyes of Conservatives, even while it was being investigated by the DoJ for its monopolistic practices.

And these days, do too many people go to these sites? I'd imagine that they go to blogs that have the news about their subject of interest, and go there. This is different from the days of first Usenet, and later, web sites of news organizations. Nowadays, people just throng to the websites they trust, and follow whatever news they want there.

Microsoft started MSNBC along with Slate and other such programming because they wanted a focus on internet delivery. They wanted to shift the American audience from consuming media on television to consuming media on computers. Which would lead to widespread broadband adoption and at least one and often multiple computers in every home. Seems to me their plan made quite a bit of sense.

Microsoft started MSNBC along with Slate and other such programming because they wanted a focus on internet delivery.

Delivery? More like they wanted a say on the content. If they wanted merely to deliver the Internet, then it would have made better sense if they signed up a bunch of different media companies (and not just one) to create a news portal. MS would be their presence on the new-fangled WWW while they continued as cable and broadcast companies (a deal that would be impossible to broker today).

Well first off they did do that, it was called Microsoft channels and was a key component of I.E. 4. Pointcast and Avantgo ended up offering better alternatives but yes Microsoft did do that.

With the other line, they wanted exclusive content. Microsoft was of the opinion, that the internet allowed for styles of journalism that couldn't exist on print and broadcast. For example offering the depth of good newspaper articles but being updated constantly like cable news. They wanted to be much more than jus

I'd like to take the replies one step further. In the mid 1990s Sun, Oracle, AOL, and others were claiming the death to the PC and all desktop computers would become internet devices. The web or network would become the computer and Microsoft would be irrelevant. In response, Gates realigned the company, refocused on the Internet and released Internet Explorer for free. I believe MSNBC partnership was a service side hedge against what Microsoft saw as a Web assault on their business. NBC, Time Warner, and other television a cable outlets also feared the Web. They was the potential for movie, programming, and music companies to reach consumers directly cutting the media giants out as distributors. I was in the Cable business in 1999 and 2000 and heard this directly from a Time Warner content manager. An NBC / Microsoft offering made sense.

By 2004/2005 the partnership no longer made sense. Time Warner / AOL didn't take over the world and media was shifting to individuals through blogging and a trend towards media streaming. YouTube appeared on the scene in 2005/2006 along with Google Video. The trend towards individual contributions has continued to change the nature of news reporting.

I think the biggest change was the movement of news channels from delivering news to providing news entertainment. IMHO Fox, MSNBC, and CNN are now entertainment assets. This goes beyond the original vision of MSNBC as an Internet news outlet.

The difference between the viewership of Fox News and MSNBC is the latter's demographic views biased news as a problem, and the former views bias in news as the Free Market(TM) at work. MSNBC types enjoy that network's criticism of Fox News so much that they're blind to their own biases.

Well, the fox viewers I know think that Fox is too establishment conservative, and not tea party enough conservative. Some are ticked that they fired Glen Beck. The crazy thing everyone forgets about is the craziest conservative to work for any news channel was Micheal Savage who was with MSNBC before melting down on air in a stream of homophobic racist rancor unfit for any tv station or viewing audience.

FOXnews hosts regularly engage in fundraising for candidates on air. That being said, I think most left leaning MSNBC watchers understand they are getting news from a Democratic perspective. For years FOX existed and nothing similar existed on the left. Now something similar exists.

Nonsense. You very rarely hear serious critiques of American positions that are agreed to by Democrats and Republicans on ABC, CBS and NBC. There is a very narrow window of thought on those networks. Moreover they present Republican positions as if there were legitimate.

For example they present the economic debate domestically as just two ideas without presenting the fact that essentially 100% of economists agree with the Democratic / Keynesian position on stimulus. They present the Republican positions

SOPA and PIPA are bad issues for the media because the media companies stand to gain from them. I wouldn't judge the media on those ones at all. That's just a systematic problem where interests of big media are going to get favorable treatment.

I actually did that after 2001. I read mostly foreign sources from late 2001-7 almost never touching domestic news, except for local & state issues. However, the media IMHO has gotten way better today than it was then. With blogging, news aggregation and opinion oriented journalism there now is a pretty good menu of domestic news sources for just about any need.

I don't see where this makes any difference. I don't watch any NBC channels, try to do as little business with Microsoft as possible, and would go back to dialup before touching Comcast again. May they all rot in hell.

There are 3 things needed for a good argument:a) Validity -- the logical structure holds upb) Soundness -- the facts presented are truec) Completeness -- all the relevant facts are being presented and are in proper context.

Tu quoque often demonstrates a deficiency of completeness. Quite often there is an implicit argument contained in a factual point. While tu quoque doesn't disprove the factual point it quite often does demonstrate that the implicit point being made is in error.

Why don't you visit msn.com and find out what it is? It is pretty self evident. It is a site that Microsoft runs, for news etc, it will remain controlled by MS, after microsoft has sold off its stake in MSNBC, which Microsoft helped found. MSN is also an ISP with dial up access but this is shrinking, due to the fact we have unfortunately monopolies by cable companies and telephone companies on broadband services that other companies are not able to enter that market.